Opinion 58

Further reflection on T&ST:

The "Free Market" is spoken of by its most vocal proponents (Republican presidential hopefuls and conservative talk show hosts) in tones religious, both in a dogmatic and a charismatic sense. This is its message of hope: the full unleashing of the Free Market, the time to come when regulation and government interference will be done away with, and the Free Market will truly show that it can reinvigorate the nation. Things erring in the world will be set aright. Ma and pa, sitting around their kitchen tables and fretting about their mortgage will suddenly be swept into the great upward motion towards something wealthier and stronger. It is the Idea and the Genius of America. It is America's Gospel, spoken about in quivering anticipatory voices, the vague and ephemeral rock on which all future hopes are placed.

And when confronted with the manifold failures of capitalistic enterprises, it is always the same excuse: well, the market was not really free in this situation. If only x would be allowed to happen, then the Free Market would prove itself. And if a disaster occurs even in a setting where the aforementioned x was allowed to happen, then one will be told that both x and y were really what the Free Market needed to thrive - if only it would have been allowed both! Of course, economics is not a simple art, and a working economy requires many an x and y, yet the suspension of incredulity which one must assent to in order to accommodate every single apologia for the re-occurring failures of the Free Market seems to have no limit.

There is a religious fervor to the defense of the Free Market's doctrines which leads to such bizarre and unthoughtful dead ends that it reminds me in many ways of fundamentalist attempts to fix all the oddities in Scripture, defending them desperately before the standards of MODERN SCIENCE (with its hubristically large caps). The explanations of the inconsistencies in the Gospel become more and more unbelievable and unlikely; the conspiracy theories of hidden scientific evidence that would validate a 7,000 year old earth become more and more elaborate. The defenders of that which really cannot be defended make asses of themselves. And then they carry on.

It is this same bizarro world which many on the Right now live. This transfer of religious fervor and language from things of religion to the market and (in a different but equally important manner, the state) is a most fascinating and terrifying aspect of Modernity. We shall have our gods and sacrifices, we shall have our holy doctrines, nevermind the fact that we are supposedly done being superstitious.